Samsung's attempt to wriggle out of paying $548m to Apple has been shot down by the federal circuit court in Washington DC.
Back in 2012, the South Korean giant was ordered by a district court in California to pay Apple just over half a billion dollars for shipping Android smartphones that infringing the iPhone maker's patents …

The appeals court told them the verdict was sound but judgment was too high. Have they even started the process to get a reconsidered amount yet? At this point the interest on the withheld money will probably be higher than whatever they get it reduced to.

"Samsung's only remaining hope in beating Apple lies in". In being better than Apple, said from the point of a consumer. Don't worry so much about the US market, like Nokia, it's not worth it, and you are already loosing it in markets that are indeed worth it.

Better lawyers

"Have they even started the process to get a reconsidered amount yet?"

Yeah, they (per the article) already got it cut from over $1 billion to $550 million.

Too bad Samsung didn't get better lawyers.

Samsung's lawyers kept making procedural errors, Apple's lawyers would raise an objection, and the judge would agree and render some piece of info Samsung wanted to admit inadmissable. It happened so often I did begin to wonder if the judge wasn't an Apple fanboi... but, I think it's just as likely he's a strict stickler to procedure over letting all information be admitted (which is probably just as well, otherwise if Apple had lost they would have just pointed to the procedural irregularity and gotten a mistrial or something anyway.)

I recall one point, one of the VERY phones Apple showed in a photo showing Samsung phones were copying the rounded corner of Apples, Samsung pointed out that very phone had already been on the market over 6 months before the IPhone even shipped. But, they did it too late, after the discovery phase, so the judge invalidated it.

Re: Better lawyers

"But, they did it too late, after the discovery phase, so the judge invalidated it."

How, exactly, does that work in a developed-world legal system? "We have proof that no crime has taken place." "Sorry, you are too late, so we now will proceed assuming that the crime did take place." There's no confusing the terms "legal system" and "justice system", is there?

Re: Better lawyers

This is the difference between Criminal and Civil trials.

In Civil cases the Discovery period is where ALL the evidence that is going to be presented at trial is released to the other side. In Criminal cases the Defence does not have to share their key evidence with the prosecution wheras the proecution has to share everything with the defence.

Outside this period? You had better have a really good reason for getting a Judge to admit some critical piece of evidence.

As I see it in this case, the face that a phone had been on sale before the suit was filed is a real 'Doh' moment. If it was that critical then Samsung should have given it to Apple during Discovery.

A common tactic is to hide bits of evidence like this in a pile of irrelevant stuff. The side hiding are clean becasie they have released it to the other side but....

IIRC they did this in the Erin Brockovitvch case. If the recipients of this 'stuff' can't find the key bits of evidence that they have in their posession then tough.

IANAL but the explanations of Discovery that PJ put up on Groklaw during the SCO case has proved useful.

Re: Better lawyers

In Civil cases the Discovery period is where ALL the evidence that is going to be presented at trial is released to the other side. In Criminal cases the Defence does not have to share their key evidence with the prosecution wheras the proecution has to share everything with the defence.

It's worse than that. In civil cases, as you say, both sides have to give each other ALL of their evidence. Anything not submitted during the Discovery phase simply does not exist as far as the court case is concerned, unless one side can demonstrate that they didn't know it while Discovery was going on. And even then, if the other side can show that the guys trying to introduce 'new' evidence should have known about that evidence during Discovery, then it will still be thrown out. The fact that this was a Samsung device means that Samsung should have known about it during Discovery. Either they didn't tell their lawyers or their lawyers are incompetent. Either way, Samsung loses. The alleged evidence is out, as it was not submitted in time.

In a criminal case, should the defence discover that the prosecution had 'exculpatory evidence', evidence in its possession which would tend to cast doubt on the defendant's guilt, and failed to share that evidence with the defence, not only could that invalidate the trial but if the evidence was good enough it might get the prosecutors up on charges of prosecutorial misconduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_misconduct However, most cases of even blatant and deliberate hiding of evidence have resulted in, at most, the disbarment of the prosecutor in question. Rarely do prosecutors go to prison for the deliberate railroading of defendants they have to have known were innocent. The classic example was mentioned in the Wiki article, the Duke lacrosse team case, wherein several men were charged with participating in a gang rape despite physical evidence showing them to have been up to 20 miles away at the alleged time of the alleged gang rape, and no evidence whatsoever except the bare word of the alleged victim that they were present and the testimony of the alleged victim's alleged fellow stripper that no rape occurred as the two of them were together the entire time except for perhaps 5 minutes, nowhere long enough for the alleged rape to have occured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case

Re: Better lawyers

"As I see it in this case, the face that a phone had been on sale before the suit was filed is a real 'Doh' moment. If it was that critical then Samsung should have given it to Apple during Discovery."

As I see it in general, things that are generally available public information - if something is available for the public to buy, that's got to count a public information - should not need to be brought to the attention of the court. Unless the legal system in question also says that during the discovery phase at least one party has to remind everyone to breathe, as if it's not included it is not relevant during the hearings?

Re: Better lawyers

The point is to make sure that party A has the opportunity to investigate and find counter arguments for evidence that party B presents. Otherwise weak evidence can be presented and not challenged because there was no opportunity to investigate it and find evidence it was incorrect

In this case Apple would have been required to provide the list of phones they were going to be presenting to Samsung, who should then have provided evidence that one of their phones existed prior to this or simply dropped that piece of evidence

Wow, the US is gonna actually claim some tax from Apple!

Hey Samsung, be sure to pay the money within the territory of the United States, so they can't book it as offshore income and shuffle it away to their bermuda haven without giving Uncle Sam his fair share.

If there's one thing Apple hate more than anything, it's paying US tax. So that'll at least send a fuck you to them.

Re: Wow, the US is gonna actually claim some tax from Apple!

Probably not: court-ordered compensation isn't normally counted as income for tax purposes. (The logic is that it's restoring something you lost, so there isn't actually supposed to be a net gain to you.)

Re: Wow, the US is gonna actually claim some tax from Apple!

it's not restoring something they lost; it's paying compensation for infringing a type of patent that should not be allowed to exist - perhaps Samsung should have tried to invalidate the patents instead. Perhaps via the patent office of whichever corporate shelter Apple use - if Apple are based there, then it's patent office must be the one that Apple would naturally go to for protection of it's "novel" "innovative" technical solutions.

Back when this started ...

Apple bought their displays from Samsung. There was no-one else capable of making them. I assume there followed a discussion between Apple and Samsung about the price of phone LCDs. Next, Apple started buying some displays elsewhere, then there were news reports about the reduced quality of iPhone displays - the ones that were not made by Samsung.

Apple invested in a glass manufacturer (GT Advanced Technologies) to upgrade their equipment and sell sapphire glass to Apple at a loss. The project was so successful that GT filed for bankruptcy (a popular activity among Apple's suppliers).

For all we know, Samsung have already got their money back by charging Apple extra for components. Despite all this, there are still winners an losers here. Apple's shareholders have paid some hefty legal bills.